The following discussion of the prior art is intended to enable the invention to be placed in an appropriate technical context and to allow the advantages of it to be fully appreciated. However, any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
With the advent of new and improved cladding materials in a variety of geometrical forms, the popularity of frame plus cladding construction techniques is increasing, particularly in the residential market. At the same time there is increasing demand for energy efficient structures which necessitates, or at least encourages, use of insulating materials between the frame and the cladding of such structures. Furthermore, in most cladding systems, a space is maintained between the exterior wall panels and interior insulation layer to serve as a rainscreen. The rainscreen deters rainwater intrusion into the building and allows ventilation and removal of any water that may enter the wall cavity.
One difficulty which arises in constructing some cladding systems, is the need to correctly align the mating surfaces of adjacent cladding panels on the frame, and to maintain this alignment after the erection process has been completed. In a cladding system for a wall, it is typically desired to fix the cladding panels to the frame such that a substantially continuous wall surface is defined by each array of panels, be they flat mounted panels or long arrays of panels to be mounted in an overlapping arrangement. However, using popular soft foam thermal insulating strips for example, it is often difficult to achieve such a flat surface at the adjoining or abutting edges of adjacent panels, which reduces the aesthetic appeal provided by the final wall. This difficulty arises, at least in part, due to the physical properties of these soft foam insulating strips and/or irregularities in the frame.
Such misalignment of adjacent cladding panels can give rise to a more serious situation where the building section is a floor of the building. In particular, such misalignment of adjacent panels or floor boards can give rise to undesirable unevenness in flooring. While rigid polystyrene foam alternatives used for walls and high density rubber sheets used for floors reduce this problem to some extent, they are slow to install and awkward to transport.
Another issue which arises with the use of soft foam strips is that, when either hand or gun nailing the cladding panels to the frame, the nails are often over driven such that an indentation is formed in the cladding panel and the head of the nail sits beneath the surface of the panel, again reducing the aesthetic appeal provided by the wall.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or ameliorate one or more of the disadvantages of the prior art, or to at least provide a useful alternative.